P27 Nordic Payments Platform makes strategic acquisition of Bankgirot

P27 Nordic Payments Platform, after having registered interest in 2019, has signed an agreement to acquire Bankgirocentralen BGC AB (Bankgirot), Sweden’s only clearing house for mass payments.

Bankgirot, established in 1959, is a proprietary clearing system (a giro) in Sweden used for account to account payments.

Bankgirot is the only clearing house for mass payments in Sweden and as such has a central role in the Swedish payments infrastructure, handling transactions of a total value of approximately SEK 73 billion per day, including through its real-time payment service BiR, that enables the Swedish real time payment system Swish.

The acquisition marks a very important step in P27’s ambition to create one common state-of-the-art payment platform in the Nordic countries.

“P27’s acquisition of Bankgirot is a very important step in our ambition to build a solid Nordic clearing infrastructure,” says Lars Sjögren, CEO of P27 Nordic Payments Platform. “This will enable the Nordics to take the lead in building the world’s first integrated cross-border and cross-currency payments region, facilitating the needs of banks, consumers and society at large.”

In the short term there will be no changes to Bankgirot as a result of this transaction. Businesses and consumers will be able to continue using Bankgirot’s services as before and it is business as usual for the employees at Bankgirot.

The acquisition is conditioned on regulatory approvals, including merger approval by the European Commission and ownership assessment by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority. P27 expects to be able to close the acquisition in Q1 2021.